Isebrand.com turned 10 years old in January 2014. I wouldn't have expected anyone to notice.... But even I didn't! That's a bit pathetic. :)

Below is the first post, "Why This Site," that I published. Most of the links are dead. (Also, above is a screen cap--click to enlarge--of the top potion of the blog's first page's worth of posts. It's in my digital archives, not online. Back then I used Fat Cow's hosting services.)

Okay, I admit that I'm a tad impressed that a decade ago I was blogging about wealth disparity and the top 1%. Frankly, they're topics I moved away from over time though they're certainly on my mind again a lot nowadays.

I launched Isebrand.com on January 7, 2004. It was entirely focused on U.S. politics and done in HTML. If TypePad or WordPress existed back then, I didn't know about them. What's annoying is that I went from several hundred daily unique visitors on average (getting more than 5,000 daily during the week of the 2004 General Election and the day after) to 100s fewer once I switched to TypePad in 2006. All of a sudden many followers couldn't find my blog as easily and it seemed lost to search engines.

Now, "Isebrand.com 2.0," as it were, is just a sort of scrapbook of Web snippets, more likely to be about the UK or British history or a good cocktail recipe as it is to be about U.S. politics. On an extremely good day, I might get 200-300 visitors but that's rare; merely 50-80 is more common.

If my initial post's tone seems angry, it's because I was. I'd been a big Al Gore fan and his tone-deaf, stiff-as-a-board, and ill-advised campaign style infuriated me to no end. I'd met him in person and he was droll, quick, clever, and likable. (Okay, and a little stiff.) I didn't welcome but didn't thoroughly dread a Bush administration after Gore conceded. Remember, "compassionate conservative" was a motto in the air then, and Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, was relatively centrist even by the standards of the GOP then. By the standards of the Tea Party-era GOP, the George H. W. Bush of the late 1980s couldn't today win a primary race for county dog catcher.

But, 9/11 and its aftermath showed G. W. Bush's true colors. I found the GOP's demagogic lies of the 2002 midterms to be utterly unconscionable. To successfully insinuate that the likes of Max Cleland and other Congressional Democrats were potentially traitorous or dangerous of opposing a rush into a war of choice against Iraq, a nation not involved in 9/11, almost literally sickened me. It sickened me that the GOP dared to do such knavish things and that so many voters bought into it.

By late 2003, I was part of the Draft Clark movement and agreed with Gore Vidal--now the late Gore Vidal (and I still agree with him on this)--that George W. Bush's administration was one of the worst to ever befall the republic, largely a calculating and grotesquely cynical cabal bent on warmongering globally for personal profit and glory, stirring up the religious right domestically, and deliberately spending while cutting taxes in order to cause a crisis of debt that could be used as an excuse to undo the New Deal.

My late and beloved Aunt Ardith Buffington was among the sweetest and least judgmental people I've ever had the privilege to know. She was not very political. I remember being taken aback when she somewhat sharply declared once to me and my uncle when President George W. Bush appeared on the television screen, maybe in 2005 or 2006, "Oo, when I see his face, I just want to slap him." There was something about that man. Not just the policies but the swagger, the smirk, the seeming lack of serious-mindedness, that could cause strong antipathy. In general, I think it was often warranted, and while I am very good about avoiding the ad hominem these days (guideline: "attack the idea, the message, not the person or messenger") and think it is an important principle, back then on Isebrand.com, I often referred to the President as a "frat punk."

BECAUSE the wealthiest 1% of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95%combined;BECAUSE the president threw away a $237 billion government surplus, leaving America no emergency funds;BECAUSE his imprudence has given us a $400 billion deficit;BECAUSE he feeds wealth disparity with tax give-aways that help the rich, force service cutsfor the rest of us, and drive state and community taxes up;

BECAUSE on January 28, 2003 the president lied to America before Congress assembled;BECAUSE he exploited the 9/11 tragedy to start an unrelated war, and deceived Americans to gain their support.BECAUSE his war is diverting money and immeasurable resources from the fight against terrorism;BECAUSE his warmongering showed contempt for our allies and squandered their goodwill;BECAUSE he protects officials who treasonously betrayed an American intelligent agent;BECAUSE he and his staff censorinformationand withhold from the American public even basic facts about their secretgovernance;

BECAUSE his environmental record is the worst of any president in American history.

BECAUSE the grassroots campaigns of Howard Deanand Wesley Clark offer the hope of a resurgent Democratic Party;BECAUSE Democrats are finally recognizing the need for better political communication;BECAUSE grassroots organizations like MoveOn.org show that the Internet can help defend the republic and its constitution;

1970s anxieties about inflation [are being substituted by] today's concerns about the emergence of the plutocratic rich and their impact on economy and society. [Economist Thomas] Piketty is in no doubt, as he indicates in an interview in today's Observer New Review, that the current level of rising wealth inequality, set to grow still further, now imperils the very future of capitalism. He has proved it.

Wealth inequality rises as 1) return on capital rises faster than both workers' wages and general economic growth (see chart #1, click to enlarge, and for more on the related issue of decreasing income mobility in the U.S. see "Inequality Is Not the Problem", Jeff Madrick, NYR Blog, 2014 ),2) super-high-income workers (e.g., CEOs) reward each other with mega-salaries to "keep up with the other rich" (see chart #2 from "We're More Unequal Than You Think", The New York Review of Books, 2012),3) inherited wealth and corporate gains aren't greatly taxed (compared to the early post-WWII era especially), 4) tax-reduction/-avoidance schemes abound especially for the rich who can afford the experts to manage their money globally, and 5) the cultural and societal insularity of the wealthy, their disconnectedness from the vast majority of those who are not exceedingly wealthy, combines with their money-driven power (e.g., campaign contributions and armies of lobbyists) to keep the system in place. Such power puts me in mind of the old "golden rule"--he who has the gold makes the rules.

Importantly, due largely to #4 above, the middle class ends up with a disproportionate share of the tax burden to keep the social safety net, defense, services (sanitation, policing, fire fighting), education, and transportation infrastructure in place, even though the services, education, and infrastructure benefit the mega-wealthy, too, directly or indirectly.

The result: it becomes more important who you're born to than what job you have or even what business you create. In the situation Piketty describes, not even typical entrepreneurs can ever expect to gain close to the kind of wealth that the rentier class will enjoy, will see grow (faster than will grow wages or the general economy), and will pass on to offspring...largely untaxed.

It might be noted, too, that with the middle-class's retirement funds so tired up in stocks due to the financial innovation of the 401k, the super-rich can use political rhetoric that suggests they and simple shareholders are on the same team, which they are not.

Another key point of Piketty's book is that the mid-20th-century period of reduced wealth inequality and reduced income inequality is the exception, not the rule, because, as a friend of mine summarized, the disruptions of two world wars and the Great Depressions hugely reduced the capital controlled by the upper classes both through direct destruction and by making very high taxation politically possible. (See that plunge in the rate of return on chart #1 above, 1913–1950.)

Stating that capitalism isn't working is not the same as stating that capitalism doesn't work. Piketty seems to promote a mixed economy. As I think it is better understood by the voting public in much of Europe (perhaps especially Germany and the Scandinavian countries) than in the U.S., there is no strict, binary choice between socialism and capitalism. There are myriad gradations in between the two. Capitalism's tendency toward a final winner-take-all result can be curtailed and social unrest kept at bay by policies such as more progressive taxation, global wealth taxes, etc. However, these tactics are not practicable now. Outrage among the voting majority simply isn't great enough to precipitate change. And all of this is hard to tweet, so good luck getting anyone under the age of 30 to give a damn.

Piketty's book stems from many years of work and research. It will take some time for challenges to emerge robustly, but some are already published. Examples include these considerations via Forbes.com. (Scroll down on the linked-to page for additional Forbes posts by Tom Worstall and Scott Winship about possible problems with some of Piketty's ideas. For instance, Worstall suggests that taxation on consumption is a better approach than Piketty's suggestion to tax capital.)

Slightly off-topic but not entirely unrelated: As others have pointed out, one of the factors driving the Scottish independence referendum (September 18, 2014), which I think will pass by a very slim margin, is a laudable consensus among the Scots that they do not want the kind of radical wealth inequality seen in England and the U.S.A. (See, "Scottish nationalists look to Nordic model for independence", Financial Times.) However, whether independence is the best course for lessening or protecting again wealth inequality is arguable. (Personally, I side with Better Together campaign.) The Conservatives who support continued union with Scotland may go down in history as the party that led the Government that lost the 307-year-old union between Scotland and the rest of Britain and [Northern] Ireland, despite their strenuous rhetorical efforts to preserve it. We'll find out in less that 5 months' time.

The Koch Brothers

Also, it is interesting to look in light of Piketty's book at the efforts of the billionaire economic conservative Koch brothers to have surcharges put upon users of solar power. Piketty notes that the very wealthy will engage in various efforts to maintain the status quo, no doubt. As Piketty writes, "The experience of France in the Belle Époque proves, if proof were needed, that no hypocrisy is too great when economic and financial elites are obliged to defend their interest."

The assessment of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist David Horsey in his regular "Top of the Ticket" column in the Los Angeles Times is that

the Koch brothers have a new ploy to protect the traditional energy business that helped make them the planet’s fifth- and sixth-richest humans. They are funding a campaign to shackle solar energy consumers who have escaped the grip of big electric utilities.

Of all the pro-business, anti-government causes they have funded with their billions, this may be the most cynical and self-serving.

(Click any image in this post to enlarge it.)

It seems to me that the mega-wealthy, like the Koch brothers, will happily and doggedly seek to further game the system and entrench their wealth through tax havens, low tax rates, falsehoods widely disseminated by their media operations--complete with crocodile tears for the middle class--and the political and societal influence that they buy through campaign contributions, armadas of lobbyists, and, frankly, their "charitable" giving, too. (To give a large donation to an arts institution or medical facility not only offers tax advantages but in a sense puts those entities' workers in your pocket; they daren't speak out or too obviously work to reform the status quo lest they lose a big-money donor, patron, lord.) Those with great wealth will work both to rig the system and to keep the masses' outrage at bay by fueling the narrative of the government as being the only true enemy, by fueling misinformation against whatever hurts their interests, including--in the case of the Koch brothers especially--climate change, and by fueling media coverage of and political focus on non-economic issues.

In the U.S., with the decrease in the public intensity of religious conservatives' concerns about social issues and, arguably, social conservatives dwindling numbers, the economic right-wing (and the self-described libertarian wing) of the U.S. will increasingly attack government in all its forms and experiment with new distractions. Old distractions like gay marriage or the war on drugs are losing their appeal. New ones will be found.

I suspect that the super-massively rich, the top 0.01%, like the Koch brothers, convince themselves that they are patriots. But they ignore the simple fact that liberty as outlined in our republic's founding documents is meant to work alongside--variously in cooperation or in tension with--the Constitution's explicitly stated purpose, among others, to PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE. I believe that the Koch brothers' efforts subvert the general welfare, and in that regard they really are more like oligarchic monarchists, insiders in the lordly court of plutocracy, than true champions of liberty.

I was intrigued by a recent segment on Up w/ Steve Kornacki that was a retrospective on Rep. Jack Kemp (1935–2009) within the context of new Republican Party outreach efforts to racial minorities.

I met Jack Kemp three or four times in 1988 in Iowa while he was campaigning for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. I was the founding President of the Kossuth County Teenage Republicans and wanted the GOP's nomination to go to either George H. W. Bush, then Vice-President under Ronald Reagan, or Congressman Kemp who represented New York's 38th District, a long-standing GOP New York "Eastern Establishment" stronghold (since 1939). It was represented in 1959–1963 by Jessica M. Weis (in 1948 she was the first woman to second the nomination for a presidential candidate by doing so for Thomas E. Dewey at the national convention in Philadelphia) and in 1963–1968 by liberal Republican Charles Goodell.

I went from teenage Republican to Democrat by the time I was old enough to register to vote and in less than a handful of years. In the late 1980's, my interest in politics was an end in and of itself. Politics for me wasn't entirely or even mainly about ideology except insofar as I was something of a Cold War warrior in mentality. I liked realpolitik internationalist types who fit a sort of JFK-shaped mold I had in mind. To me, Bush and Kemp fit that mold. Certainly, one of their competitors for the party's nomination did not: Pentecostal television preacher Pat Robertson. I found him totally off-putting. But Robertson would go on to place second in the Iowa Caucuses with 25% of the vote behind Rep. Bob Dole with 37%. Bush and Kemp garnered 19% and 11% respectively.

Robertson's success, though short-lived within the '88 nomination cycle itself, was a sign of things to come for the GOP. I know exactly when I started to dislike Pat Robertson and it pre-dated his run for office. Though I couldn't have known it at the time, the moment that I came to thoroughly dislike Robertson was also a small but very sure step--perhaps the first--along a path to Democratic Party membership. It was when I heard Robertson gravely warn of the Satanic nature of the game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). Yep.

It was during a broadcast of the 700 Club, a religious television show he hosted on his own network. The show usually included a heavy emphasis on politics, human interest stories, and Robertson's prophecies. He also miraculously healed unnamed people through their television screens, sometimes of hemorrhoids.

It's an unlikely sort of political consciousness-raising moment. But, it was telling: Robertson was a public political figure, a leader of the religious right-wing, and therefore strongly focused on societal issues...even tabletop games. I had played role-playing games similar to D&D, and what Robertson said that evening on the 700 Club, like countless other of his comments before and since, was asinine. But, stunningly, Republicans in the future would later beat Robertson on the asininity scale: charges of Bill Clinton "body counts," cries of Affordable Care Act "death panels," conspiracy theories of Barack Obama being a foreign-born crypto-Muslim, and--along the way--other everything from Tinky Winky's purple triangular antenna to SpongeBob SquarePants's supposed gay agenda.

Robertson was the future of the GOP mindset that would be fuelled further by conservative PACs and think tanks as well as a conservative media echo chamber that includes sermons and conversations in conservative evangelical churches and Bible studies, and the massive conservative Christian media empire spanning radio, television, print, and online. The likes of Jack Kemp would become fewer. And not because Kemp was liberal, either. He was no liberal. But because Kemp's social conservatism was actually interested in governance, policy, and notions of community. He was comfortable with racial diversity. He understood the importance of America's cities. He was also a happy warrior. His work for conservative ideals was not based in anger or resentment. These qualities certainly wouldn't sit well with today's Tea Party.

From the religious right of the 1980s to the Tea Party of today is not as long or as complicated of a political evolutionary path as you might think. Studies by Pew and other institutions and academics have revealed the close connection between the Tea Party and the religious right-wing.* Tea Party leaders stress that the movement is about libertarianism. Maybe it is, to a point, but look just under the surface and it's often much about social conservatism, too.

Before Kemp, liberal Republican Charles Goodell had been ousted from that same Congressional seat by a challenger from the right. Kemp's election solidified the district's solidly conservative Republican reputation. But, nowadays, Kemp himself would probably be in the cross-hairs of the Tea Party. Kemp just wasn't the sort to despise a president or government so much as to shout "You lie!" during our republic's head of state's annual address to Congress.

Maybe the religious right's best days are behind it, and maybe the Tea Party movement has crested, too. John Boehner certainly seems fed-up with it. And Politico is asking, "Is Paul Ryan the GOP's Next Jack Kemp?" We'll see.

Rev. Randall Balmer, Mandel Family Professsor of Arts & Sciences at Dartmouth College and chairman of Dartmouth's religion department, recently spoke at Zion Episcopal Church in Manchester, VT. A scholar of Protestantism's history in the United States, Balmer makes an important point about the origins of the religious right-wing political movement, as reported by Mark E. Rondeu (@banner_religion) in the Bennington Banner:

It is widely believe that evangelicals turned against Carter and toward the Republicans because of abortion, legalized in the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. Balmer calls this "the abortion myth."

Instead he pointed to a lower court ruling which upheld the contention by the Internal Revenue Service that "any organization that engages in racial segregation or racial discrimination is not by definition a charitable organization. Therefore it has no claims on tax-exempt status, and similarly any donations to such an organizations can no longer qualify for tax exemption," Balmer said.

This was used by the IRS in 1975 to rescind the tax exemption of Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist school in Greenvile, S.C., which did not admit African Americans to the student body until 1971 and until 1975, out of fears of racial mixing, did not admit unmarried African Americans.

"That is what got people like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and the other leaders of the religious right activated as political players in order to reverse those actions against these schools," he said. "That was the catalyst for the Religious Right. Abortion did not become part of the religious right agenda until 1979."

Balmer also spoke to American voters' and the media's over-reliance on questioning politicians about their religion.

"Part of the problem, I think, in the American political process is that in America religion serves as a proxy for morality," Balmer said. "Especially after the Nixon administration, we Americans want to know that our candidates for the highest office in the land are good, decent, moral, trustworthy people. The problem is we don't know how to ask the question, so we say: ‘are you religious? What is your religion?'

He added, "The flawed premise behind that question is that somebody who is not avowedly religious, or has no religious affiliation, cannot be a good, moral, decent person. That's demonstrably false."

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting with Randall Balmer at Columbia's journalism school. I was considering attending "J School", and he was generous with his time and advice. I still recall the inspiring glimpse in Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory--a documentary based on his book of the same title--of a Charismatic Episcopal Church.

Hear me ask my question to the panel of BBC Radio 4's Any Questions?this week. It will be broadcast online and on UK radio at 3:00 p.m. EDT (New York), 20:00 in the UK and available as a free podcast for download.* (Also available for free via iTunes.)

This week's panelists:

Sir Harold Evans of The Sunday Times, US News and World Report, The Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Daily News. In 1986 he founded Conde Nast Traveler. His book The American Century (1998) receiving particular acclaim. He is editor-at-large of The Week Magazine.

Former U.S. Rep. Nan Hayworth (NY 19th Congressional district) who may be considering a re-entry into politics. She was defeated in 2012 by Sean Patrick Maloney (who I've met several times over the course of years, as well as his partner Randy who is a fellow Hawkeye).

U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards (MD 4th Congressional district) who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2008 and sits on the Committee on Science, Space and Technology and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

I attended a recording on the evening of April 18th, 2013, of one of my favorite radio shows, BBC Radio 4's Any Questions?, the world's longest-running radio panel discussion program, begun in 1948.** The show traveled across the pond to NYC this week to Columbia University's School of Journalism. Usually the show is broadcast live in the UK, and broadcast from a different location each week.

Attendees' questions are submitted ahead of time and selected by BBC staff. Panelists don't know ahead of time what the questions will be. For this taping, my question was one selected. I got to read my question aloud to the panel. For me this was very exciting.

The show has 3 million listeners a week, and it is part of my BBC Radio 4 triumvirate podcast I listen to each weekend--the other two programs being Friday Night Comedy (The News Quiz hosted by Sandi Toksvig and The Now Show with Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt) and In Our Time with host Melvyn Lord Bragg of Wigton.

*It's rebroadcast at 8:10 a.m. EDT on Saturday, 13:10 in the UK, too. Once archieved, it will be here.

Mr Romney won the white vote by 59% to 39%—an improvement over John McCain’s showing in 2008. But in Midwestern swing states, that margin was narrower: just four points in Wisconsin, for example, and 15 in Ohio......Over the course of his presidency, [Obama] has pointedly unveiled policies designed to appeal to each element of this coalition......Perhaps the best illustration of Mr Obama’s campaign-by-niches is his wooing of gay voters.
The 5% of voters who identified themselves as gay in exit polls opted for Mr Obama by 76% to 22%—enough to account for his entire margin of victory.

From The New Yorker -- a summing up of Washington's situation the last 50 years, in 340 words.

For the past generation or two, Washington has been the not so hallowed ground for a political war. This conflict resembles trench warfare, with fixed positions, hourly exchanges of fire, heavy casualties on both sides, and little territory gained or lost. The combatants wear red or blue, and their struggle is intensely ideological.

Before the nineteen-seventies, most Republicans in official Washington accepted the institutions of the welfare state, and most Democrats agreed with the logic of the Cold War. Despite the passions over various issues, government functioned pretty well. Legislators routinely crossed party lines when they voted, and when they drank; filibusters in the Senate were reserved for the biggest bills; think tanks produced independent research, not partisan talking points. The "D." or "R." after a politician's name did not tell you what he thought about everything, or everything you thought about him.

To Phyllis Schlafly and the New Right, this consensus amounted to liberalism, and in the nineteen-seventies they began to use guerrilla tactics--direct mail, single-issue pressure groups, right-wing think tanks, insurgent campaigns. By the nineties, conservatives had begun to take over the institutions of government. Liberals copied their success: the Heritage Foundation led to the Center for American Progress, the Moral Majority to People for the American Way, Bill O'Reilly to Keith Olbermann. The people Washington attracts now tend to be committed activists, who think of themselves as locked in an existential struggle over the fate of the country, and are unwilling to yield an inch of ground.

Meanwhile, another army has invaded Washington: high-priced influence peddlers working on behalf of corporations and the wealthy, seducing officials of both parties and daily routing the public interest. The War of Organized Money goes on almost unnoticed outside the capital, but the War Between the Colors reflects a real divide in the country, the sorting of Americans into ideologically separate districts and lives. From time to time, a looming disaster--such as the upcoming budget crisis--leads to negotiations and a brief truce. But the fighting never really stops.

Jill Lepore's "The Lie Factory" in the September 24, 2012, issue of The New Yorker is facinating. Baxter and Whitaker were California Republicans. They represented many clients, not just politicians. They used their knowledge, savvy, and insights to successfully thwart attempts to create government administration and expansion of health care.

Camapign operatives and political consultants, take note! Here are some nuggets from Campaigns, Inc.

“In a typical campaign they employed ten million pamphlets and leaf-lets; 50,000 letters to ‘key individuals and officers of organizations’; 70,000 inches of advertising in 700 newspapers; 3,000 spot announcements on 109 radio stations; theater slides and trailers in 160 theaters; 1,000 large billboards and 18,000 or 20,000 smaller posters.”

Lepore continues:

In 1940, they produced materials for the Republican Wendell Willkie’s Presidential campaign, including a speaker’s manual that offered advice about how to handle Democrats in the audience: “rather than refer to the opponent as the ‘Democratic Party’ or ‘New Deal Administration’ refer to the Candidate by name only.”

Save seventy-five per cent of your budget for the month before Election Day.

Campaigns, Inc. created an ad agency, a newspaper wire service that sent a political clipsheet every week to "fifteen hundred 'thought leaders.'"

Make it personal: candidates are easier to sell than issues.

If your position doesn’t have an opposition, or if your candidate doesn’t have an opponent, invent one. "You can't beat something with nothing," [Whitaker and Baxter] liked to say.

I have long been baffled as to why people said my preference over Obama was some kind of shift to the ideological left. Nope. Against a radical right, reckless, populist insurgency, Obama is the conservative option, dealing with emergent problems with pragmatic calm and modest innovation. He seeks as a good Oakeshottian would to reform the country's policies in order to regain the country's past virtues. What could possibly be more conservative than that? Or less conservative than the radical fusion of neoconservatism, theoconservatism and opportunism that is the alternative?

For thinking conservatives of a classic variety, Obama is the best president since Clinton and the first Bush. We need him for the next four years if we are to avoid the catastrophes that always follow revolutionary ideology. Like another Iraq; or another Katrina; or another Lehman.

(Image: Edmund Burke, PC, (1729-1797), by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), National Portrait Gallery, London, an Anglo-Irishman in the conservative Whig faction in the British House of Commons during the American Revolution and widely considered a representative of classical liberalism and the philosophical founder of modern Conservatism.)

1. How have your early experiences within the Mormon Church -- particularly your two-year proselytizing mission to France and your service as Bishop and Stake President -- shaped your character and your worldview?

2. How does Mormonism's boundless optimism, which transcends even death in a manner unlike any other religion, shape your vision of America's present and future?

3. All religions have fabulous foundational stories. The Mormons are no exception. The difference is that their theology is younger and famously literal. It tells us that God has a body, that there is a plurality of Gods who eat and drink and mate as we do, that the golden plates were real, and that when we die there is a concrete and specific heaven where families are reunited. How has the singular physicality of your faith shaped your view of the world, not only as a private citizen but as a national leader?

4. When Mormons are asked about Joseph Smith's powerful final vision about man becoming God, "God-like" is almost always substituted for becoming God. But Mormonism's oft-quoted tenet is unambiguous: "As God is, man may become." Can you explain this core belief in a way that addresses the charge of blasphemy made by other religions?

5. Why do your new positions on immigration, social welfare, gay rights and abortion differ from official positions of the Mormon Church? Can you place these differences in a context that reassures Americans that Mormonism is not a philosophical monolith -- that indeed there is ample room within the label of "devout Mormon" for people as diverse as you and Senator Harry Reid?

6. What your church labels "sacred" is frequently termed by others "secret" or even "sinister," leading many to conclude that Mormons may not always be telling us what they truly believe. How can you assuage these suspicions by articulating your beliefs?

7. Given that your church's highest leadership councils consist entirely of white males, that it denies its lay priesthood to women and that it played the decisive role in the passage of California's Proposition 8, how can you assure the American public that the composition of your administration and the policies that you would pursue would be reflective of, and responsive to, the diversity that is the foundation of this nation's strength?

8. When asked about the part of his Baptist faith that meant most to him personally and as the nation's leader, President Clinton spoke movingly -- and in his words --a bout "the God of second chances." Human fallibility and the possibility of divine redemption -- these were Clinton's themes. What element of Mormon history or theology has had special resonance for you and has shaped your view of human nature, and of God?

9. Of all the misconceptions surrounding your religion, which one has offended you the most? Or, to interject a lighter note, what misinformation or stereotype has caused you to roll your eyes and even laugh when you are with your Mormon friends?